On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 2:12 PM, Ralf Mardorf <ralf.mardorf@rocketmail.com> wrote:
In the past I sometimes had no reason _not_ to run makepkg as root, when I wanted to compile from ABS, located in /var/abs/. I'm aware about the drawback, that actually isn't relevant for my kind of computer usage + several available backups. However, indeed, for my needs non-root 100% does do the job too. No, I won't copy from ABS to some user dir, I simply will chown or chmod in a way the big teachers won't us to act self-responsible (I simply ignored the kindergarten flame-war like posts). JFTR my machine isn't a server or a terrorist top secret whatsoever machine. It's a digital audio workstation and there are several, individual, complete backups available for each month.
If you are using yaourt, there is a sync option -b, --build Build from sources, ABS for official packages, or AUR if packages is not found. Specify this option twice to build all dependencies. So: 'yaourt -Sb packagename' should build that package even if it is from the repos.You don't even need to keep the abs tree. Just build stuff the same way you'd build AUR packages.
Resume: I can live without '--asroot', but I'm against dropping it, just for backwards compatibility. Imagine that somebody wrote a script or whatever, that needs '--asroot'.
IMOH it isn't wise to ignore backwards compatibility. And btw. I dislike the claims mentioned by a link ... "Linux has never been about 'choice' or 'freedom' and those myths should just die out." ... underpinned with a link to redhat :(. IMHO Johannes Löthberg is completely wrong, likely a maintainer for the wrong distro.
Well, I couldn't care less about their nonsense, but I still don't see why that means we need backwards compatibility. Backwards compatibility is a good thing, but never a reason to hold back the software from what it could become. I can think of worse things than people needing to update their automation scripts. Especially if it is something Arch doesn't want them doing anyway. ;)